Flood and Water Management

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that I am secretary to the Fire Brigades Union.

I will focus on the statutory responsibility for flood preparation and flood response, although I almost feel that I should apologise for raising the matter so consistently in recent years. After the 2007 floods, the Pitt review was undertaken; its early recommendations were fairly straightforward, despite what the Committee calls some vagueness. The report recommended:

“The Government should urgently put in place a fully funded national capability for flood rescue with Fire and Rescue Authorities playing a leading role, underpinned as necessary by a statutory duty.”

That recommendation was fairly clear, but, referring to what the report had to say about preparation and rescue, Pitt added that

“the Review strongly believes that a statutory duty is the best means to achieve these outcomes.”

He continued:

“Whilst it is conceivable that non-statutory approaches, such as those proposed by the CFRA”—

chief fire and rescue adviser, Ken Knight—

“might work, such approaches do not provide the certainty the public expect and the Review believes is needed.”

All the evidence demonstrates that the original Pitt recommendations were correct. Despite some additional moneys being invested in equipment and in some elements of training, the evidence that the Committee received from the FBU was that things had gone backwards rather than forwards. Not enough was being invested in training exercises or in the necessary equipment. It should be blindingly obvious to those who have served in local government that if a statutory duty is not placed upon a particular local government role or function, it is no longer a priority at budget time. Statutory duties always gain priority when it comes to the allocation of resources.

I am pleased that the Committee heard more evidence on the subject, and recommendation 3 reinforces what Pitt had said. The Committee said at paragraph 26:

“We are concerned that the lack of a statutory duty for Fire and Rescue Authorities could jeopardise their flood preparation and response work, given pressures on them to direct their limited funding towards fulfilling nondiscretionary duties.”

We had hoped that the Labour Government would legislate on the matter, but what legislation we had did not deal with the question of statutory responsibility.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his declaration of interest. Is the problem in his view a matter of funding, the responsibility for which no longer lies with DEFRA but with the Department for Communities and Local Government? We stand by our recommendation, but does he think that we should go further? We say that the matter should be included in the funding formula applied to the emergency services. Does he share our disappointment that that has not been done immediately?

[John McDonnell]

The Pitt review identified two areas: clarity of leadership in a particular response and resources, because a statutory duty gives security of access to those resources. I take the view that the statutory duty needs to be introduced as quickly as possible to tackle both matters. There should be more clarity about local government’s responsibilities; flowing from that will be both the resources and the clarity of the approach on the allocation of those resources for both Government and local fire authorities.

Unfortunately, the previous Government failed to legislate, but they set up various exercises and consultations that will eventually come to fruition. After the general election, the coalition agreement made reference to the Pitt review. It committed the coalition to taking forward

“the findings of the Pitt Review to improve our flood defences, and prevent unnecessary building in areas of high flood risk”—

in other words, implementing the recommendation of the Pitt review with regard to the statutory duty. The previous Government undertook Exercise Watermark. Although they did not specifically undertake to provide the analysis for a case study for a statutory duty, we were advised by Ministers responding to parliamentary questions that the exercise would inform the Government’s decision about whether statutory responsibility would be required. The interim report from Exercise Watermark told us that there would be a final report at the end of September. Encouragingly, it also said:

“Feedback from the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA) suggested the statutory duty for flood rescue should be co-ordinated by the Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) with appropriate funding.”

The interim report indicated that we were moving towards a statutory duty being introduced by the Government.

We then also had the recommendations from the fire futures forum, which advises Government on general safety issues, including fire and flooding. It discussed the options for future reform of the fire service and called for the implementation of a statutory duty, but with some caveats on where the funding for such work should come from.

A consensus seems to have been built up in recent years, stemming from the 2007 floods and culminating in the lessons learned from the 2009 floods, that there should be a statutory responsibility. We simply await the outcome of the final report on Exercise Watermark. Will the Minister confirm whether that report will reach us by the end of September? If not, will he intervene—perhaps in this memorial way that seems to be being pushed to establish his reputation—to ensure that the report is finalised as speedily as possible?

If the report fails to recommend a statutory duty for fire and rescue authorities, there will be many who will be extremely anxious that this is a missed opportunity to clarify duties and responsibilities and to secure funding. If it does recommend a statutory responsibility, I urge the Minister—I am sure that Members in this Chamber will assist him all they can—to lobby others to ensure that there is parliamentary time to enable such legislative activity to take place.